to a guest about appa's contrarian habits - "my grandad wants the opposite of everything"
overhearing me complain to the folks at the neighboring table--this is a high blood pressure meal--at a dinner outing with the kids in a restaurant, he asks me with great concern - "is the food not good for you, amma?"
nirali - screaming in the car. in spite of kidsongs, my songs, FM...until i turned on some classical piano - really beautiful intricate playing on the radio, and she quietened, immediately!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
W., the movie—after Barack, why watch it?
W., the movie—after Barack, why watch it?
The Nov 4th election that delivered the American presidency to Barack Obama speaks volumes. For one, it signaled the American people’s readiness for the end of the Bush era, an era that has been chronicled in tell-all books by ex- White house staffers, mock-news shows, media exposes and a hundred varieties of anti-Bush bumper stickers.
In ‘W’, Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser’s cinematic chronicle of George W. Bush, the president’s character has been explored well enough, but through the narrow lens of his relationship with his father. Bush Sr.’s disapproval of Bush Jr.’s poor grades, drinking and general instability plays a disproportionately large role in defining his son’s motivations. What follows--his conversion to a born again Christian, for example--are all in one way or the other a reaction to Bush Sr.’s disappointment in him. Bush struggles with a deep sense of inadequacy. As president though, surrounded by a team of advisors that is smarter and better informed, he is lost and hardly aware of it. When in doubt, he looks to religion and the grand picture of American freedom and power.
The movie begins with Bush (played by Josh Brolin) alone in a baseball stadium, hailing rows of empty seats to the soundtrack of a roaring crowd. Symbolic as it is of Bush’s failing popularity, this motif is overused. A two term American president apparently derives his confidence from an empty baseball field full of imagined cheering. If that is not patronizing, nothing is.
The film’s most rewarding, satirical moments are the several meetings President Bush holds with his core team of advisors in the run up to the Iraq war. Each character is a caricature but Cheney and Karl Rove take the cake. Rove brings to mind Gollum from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy--small, round and devious. Cheney patiently presents agendas to a bemused president, his cynical smirk so pronounced, you could spot it in his baby pictures. Condi Rice, lifeless at the conference table, occasionally grows lips and a mouth, only to murmur, ‘Yes Mr,President.’ Though ‘W’ is packed with satire, even sympathy, it lacks punch. But it establishes (like others before) that the American presidency has been tainted.
Flash forward to November 4th and the American public arrived at the same resounding conclusion. W., the movie does promise its liberal audiences some luxuriant wound-licking, but at around seven dollars a ticket in a recession, many Americans would hesitate. Instead of hitting theatres, they went to vote. And how they have voted. In droves, braving downpours and huge delays, they have made their choice.
The town I live in, Bloomington, Indiana, is a small college town, but a democrat bastion in a historically republican state. Though the polls favored Obama, everyone remembered the past two presidential elections. The election process had been subject to such shrewd politicking, it was difficult to retain faith in its ability this time around to actually deliver victory to the real winner. On Nov 4th, election day, I simply could not sit at home anymore watching reports of voters lining up for hours, of poll booths not opening on time, news that reminded me of the possibility that 2004 would repeat itself and the election could be stolen or worse, lost for all the wrong reasons. I drove to the local Obama for America headquarters. The office was crawling with volunteers, almost all students. I could not park in the back of the building because I arrived a little before noon and SUVs were pulling in driven by women bringing lunch for the volunteers. There were home made cakes, fruit platters--entire trunks full of food. I parked on the street and went indoors to offer my time.
I was asked to canvas students, reminding them to vote. “Did you vote?” I asked as I strolled around Indiana University with flyers and stickers, craning my neck out to students rushing from building to building. ‘Yes, ‘ I heard almost every single time. Wonderful I thought, but I did not believe it. Yet on that day, after 44 years of voting republican presidential candidates into office, Barack Obama became the first democrat to win Indiana by a lead of only 26,163 votes, less than 1 percent of the votes cast, according to the New York Times. College students are often apathetic when it comes to elections; but Obama’s campaign has fired an entire demographic. Bloomington’s enrolled college students alone showed a 287 percent increase in turnout from 2004, as reported in the university newspaper. Perhaps all those students who nodded their heads to me were indeed being honest.
As I stood in my living room, watching Obama greet a euphoric 220,000 plus crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park, late on Tuesday night, I believed. Indeed, this is a land where all things are possible. Unable to contain my excitement, I got back into my car, leaving my husband with our sleeping children, and drove around the city. It was a cool night and the first revelers were out, cheering. I remembered arriving in America when the skies were blue, jobs aplenty, the information technology revolution beginning and the Lewinsky scandal lacing the air-waves with laughter. Three years later came 9/11 and the beginning of the Bush era—a time of suspicion and aggression that culminated this September in the markets crumbling to sheer penury. Has there ever in recent memory, been a longer nadir in the American ethos? The United States was sinking and we non-citizens and citizens alike, could find no salve. No hope that change was possible. With this election that despair has begun to be erased. No doubt Obama was the more viable candidate than McCain, given his youth and his selection of a wise and experienced running mate. No doubt he was a better candidate if only as a democrat with an ascending political star after eight years of republican arch-conservatism. But it is what Obama the individual embodies, that makes his election to president so enormously meaningful. Black, biracial, of modest means, with no legacy but that of his own hard work and ambition—this is the hope I latched onto.
Driving around alone that night, I realized that for the first time in my eleven years in America, I felt like I would not mind being called an American. Visiting India, I flinch when friends and family teasingly call me ‘American’. At this moment though, the word sits pretty well with me. My husband and I have long postponed our plans to apply for citizenship, if only because our children were born here. The prospect of a McCain win made us draw our breaths. Now it might not be such a bad idea after all. I could call this my land, maybe even my country at some point. After all, my son or daughter could be president, someday.
As for Oliver Stone’s story of W, it has faded inevitably against the fairy tale of Obama’s victory. Once upon a time…that time is now.
-- Shaleena Koruth
The Nov 4th election that delivered the American presidency to Barack Obama speaks volumes. For one, it signaled the American people’s readiness for the end of the Bush era, an era that has been chronicled in tell-all books by ex- White house staffers, mock-news shows, media exposes and a hundred varieties of anti-Bush bumper stickers.
In ‘W’, Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser’s cinematic chronicle of George W. Bush, the president’s character has been explored well enough, but through the narrow lens of his relationship with his father. Bush Sr.’s disapproval of Bush Jr.’s poor grades, drinking and general instability plays a disproportionately large role in defining his son’s motivations. What follows--his conversion to a born again Christian, for example--are all in one way or the other a reaction to Bush Sr.’s disappointment in him. Bush struggles with a deep sense of inadequacy. As president though, surrounded by a team of advisors that is smarter and better informed, he is lost and hardly aware of it. When in doubt, he looks to religion and the grand picture of American freedom and power.
The movie begins with Bush (played by Josh Brolin) alone in a baseball stadium, hailing rows of empty seats to the soundtrack of a roaring crowd. Symbolic as it is of Bush’s failing popularity, this motif is overused. A two term American president apparently derives his confidence from an empty baseball field full of imagined cheering. If that is not patronizing, nothing is.
The film’s most rewarding, satirical moments are the several meetings President Bush holds with his core team of advisors in the run up to the Iraq war. Each character is a caricature but Cheney and Karl Rove take the cake. Rove brings to mind Gollum from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy--small, round and devious. Cheney patiently presents agendas to a bemused president, his cynical smirk so pronounced, you could spot it in his baby pictures. Condi Rice, lifeless at the conference table, occasionally grows lips and a mouth, only to murmur, ‘Yes Mr,President.’ Though ‘W’ is packed with satire, even sympathy, it lacks punch. But it establishes (like others before) that the American presidency has been tainted.
Flash forward to November 4th and the American public arrived at the same resounding conclusion. W., the movie does promise its liberal audiences some luxuriant wound-licking, but at around seven dollars a ticket in a recession, many Americans would hesitate. Instead of hitting theatres, they went to vote. And how they have voted. In droves, braving downpours and huge delays, they have made their choice.
The town I live in, Bloomington, Indiana, is a small college town, but a democrat bastion in a historically republican state. Though the polls favored Obama, everyone remembered the past two presidential elections. The election process had been subject to such shrewd politicking, it was difficult to retain faith in its ability this time around to actually deliver victory to the real winner. On Nov 4th, election day, I simply could not sit at home anymore watching reports of voters lining up for hours, of poll booths not opening on time, news that reminded me of the possibility that 2004 would repeat itself and the election could be stolen or worse, lost for all the wrong reasons. I drove to the local Obama for America headquarters. The office was crawling with volunteers, almost all students. I could not park in the back of the building because I arrived a little before noon and SUVs were pulling in driven by women bringing lunch for the volunteers. There were home made cakes, fruit platters--entire trunks full of food. I parked on the street and went indoors to offer my time.
I was asked to canvas students, reminding them to vote. “Did you vote?” I asked as I strolled around Indiana University with flyers and stickers, craning my neck out to students rushing from building to building. ‘Yes, ‘ I heard almost every single time. Wonderful I thought, but I did not believe it. Yet on that day, after 44 years of voting republican presidential candidates into office, Barack Obama became the first democrat to win Indiana by a lead of only 26,163 votes, less than 1 percent of the votes cast, according to the New York Times. College students are often apathetic when it comes to elections; but Obama’s campaign has fired an entire demographic. Bloomington’s enrolled college students alone showed a 287 percent increase in turnout from 2004, as reported in the university newspaper. Perhaps all those students who nodded their heads to me were indeed being honest.
As I stood in my living room, watching Obama greet a euphoric 220,000 plus crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park, late on Tuesday night, I believed. Indeed, this is a land where all things are possible. Unable to contain my excitement, I got back into my car, leaving my husband with our sleeping children, and drove around the city. It was a cool night and the first revelers were out, cheering. I remembered arriving in America when the skies were blue, jobs aplenty, the information technology revolution beginning and the Lewinsky scandal lacing the air-waves with laughter. Three years later came 9/11 and the beginning of the Bush era—a time of suspicion and aggression that culminated this September in the markets crumbling to sheer penury. Has there ever in recent memory, been a longer nadir in the American ethos? The United States was sinking and we non-citizens and citizens alike, could find no salve. No hope that change was possible. With this election that despair has begun to be erased. No doubt Obama was the more viable candidate than McCain, given his youth and his selection of a wise and experienced running mate. No doubt he was a better candidate if only as a democrat with an ascending political star after eight years of republican arch-conservatism. But it is what Obama the individual embodies, that makes his election to president so enormously meaningful. Black, biracial, of modest means, with no legacy but that of his own hard work and ambition—this is the hope I latched onto.
Driving around alone that night, I realized that for the first time in my eleven years in America, I felt like I would not mind being called an American. Visiting India, I flinch when friends and family teasingly call me ‘American’. At this moment though, the word sits pretty well with me. My husband and I have long postponed our plans to apply for citizenship, if only because our children were born here. The prospect of a McCain win made us draw our breaths. Now it might not be such a bad idea after all. I could call this my land, maybe even my country at some point. After all, my son or daughter could be president, someday.
As for Oliver Stone’s story of W, it has faded inevitably against the fairy tale of Obama’s victory. Once upon a time…that time is now.
-- Shaleena Koruth
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